The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “Everything has changed,” said Myett, nodding, “and I have changed with it. Your treason is nothing to me, nor is your standing, or mine, or all the old stale points of honor. Let our fellow crawlies help one another to escape the wave, if they can find the will to do so. I want no part of that struggle. I am alone.”

  For an ixchel, the last statement was close to heresy. Ensyl struggled to keep her voice even and low. “Sanctuary awaits us, sister,” she said.

  “We will never reach it,” said Myett, “and they—they do not deserve it.”

  Her look was adamant, and Ensyl’s heart sank. Myett the worshipful had become Myett the indifferent. She had not run off, like Taliktrum, but she had exiled herself all the same. The clan was crumbling; foolishness and self-deceit would be their epitaph.

  “But, sister—”

  “I am no one’s sister anymore.”

  Ensyl could not summon the strength to argue. But Felthrup, who had been gaping at Myett, shook himself and stood up from his meal. “Now see here,” he squeaked. “You owe your life to Ixphir House.”

  “Don’t lecture me, rodent,” said Myett with a caustic laugh. “I know my debts, all right.”

  “Be quiet, you know very little,” said Felthrup, his mouth twitching so hard that crumbs flew from his whiskers. “You have a grievance with Taliktrum. That is plain as a bruise on your face. Be quiet, be quiet! You have no grievance with Ensyl, who has only shown you kindness. And you have no right to destroy the clan that raised you. No right by your people’s laws, nor by the moral constant that unites all woken souls.”

  “You read too much,” said Myett.

  “A clan, a crew, a colony of rats: they are neither blessed nor damned, neither chosen nor cast out. But they are your family. Some have mistreated you. What of it? The rest need your strength, and more wisdom than you’ve shown.”

  What had happened to Felthrup in his sleep? Ensyl wondered. He was shaking and nervous as ever, but at the same time he was speaking in a rapture of certainty, not breaking eye contact with Myett.

  “They need you,” he said, “and that matters more than your damage and pain. You must let it matter more.”

  “They despise me,” said Myett. “They have taken decades of my life and given back only scorn.”

  “And did they take nothing from me?” Felthrup displayed his mangled forepaw. “They sealed me in a bilge-pipe to suffocate. But they rescued me, too—from my family, my diseased and mutant kin, the ones who bit three inches off my tail. I gnawed at that stump, Myett—gnawed it back to bleeding, each time it started to heal. Oh, how I pitied myself! I dreamed of drowning, and I did not care who drowned with me.”

  At the word drowning, Myett’s face changed. “That was you, scrabbling in the dark!” she cried. “You little vermin. You followed me, you watched. You watched me and said nothing!”

  “I watched you rush into the hold as the water rose,” said Felthrup, “and wondered what you sought there. I never dreamed it was death.”

  Ensyl turned her back, so as not to shame the young woman before her. Aya Rin, Myett. Was it love of Taliktrum that drove you to this?

  “I will not tell you again,” said Myett, breathing hard, “to leave me in peace.”

  “That is what I mean to do,” said Felthrup. “I will go to the manger, to have a look at the Nilstone. And you, friend Myett: you will do the right thing, and be strong. Take Ensyl to warn your people. The water spared you for a reason, as that pipe spared me. It is up to us to discover those reasons, I think—and if we cannot, then to find reasons, create them if necessary. Yes, I mean it. Sometimes we must fabricate reasons to live.”

  Ensyl looked at Myett once more, and saw a broken agony in her face, a desperation. Myett lifted a hand toward her knife, and Ensyl froze. Don’t make me fight you, Myett. Don’t make one of us die. We’re both victims of our love for that family.

  Myett’s hand hovered over the knife. Then it rose, slowly, as though she would touch Felthrup on the muzzle. She did not complete the gesture, but something in her own face changed, and she turned swiftly to the wall. She could not face them, maybe, but Ensyl thought she stood a little straighter than before.

  “Damn you, Stanapeth! We’re not ready to tackle the ship!”

  Alyash was fuming. Neither Sandor Ott nor Hercól responded to his whispered outburst. They were moving as only trained assassins could, shadow to shadow, crouch to crouch. Alert to the tiniest noises, wearing dark clothes swapped with or stripped from other crew members, faces and hands and bare feet blackened from a pouch of soot. Boots would have been safer: glass and splinters and rusty nails littered the streets. But they had no proper, soft-soled footwear, and one accidental thump could make the difference between life and death.

  “Do you hear me? Nabbing the Stone tonight is blary impossible! We’ll be lucky to get aboard her at all.”

  Ott did not like sudden changes to careful plans anymore than Alyash. But Hercól’s reasoning was sound. Take the Nilstone tonight or lose it to enemies tomorrow. Lose it to enemies, and you will never defeat them.

  But Alyash had a point as well. The ship was under heavy guard, and they had not yet cased her fully. Blind terrain! How he hated it! Ott himself had already been attacked: a dozen creatures, like small monkeys but for their hairlessness and fangs, had exploded from the window of a gutted house. All on him, coordinated as a wolf pack, and Ott wondered if they had somehow decided that he was the weakest of the three. He had responded with a frenzy of killing, and sent the few survivors screeching into the night.

  In fact the ruined state of the Lower City was mostly to their advantage. Only near the cliff where the Middle City began did the streets come to life. Descending that cliff had been a moderate challenge. It had been more difficult to persuade Thasha Isiq to go with Dastu, seeking an exit to the mountains, a place they might flee to, a hideout.

  They were halfway to the port.

  Right now the greatest danger was the dogs. Killing them was too dangerous: they had only six arrows and one bow, of strange dlömic design, taken off a man Ott had personally authorized Dastu to kill. A foot soldier, sent back to the barracks for a cough, and quite unaware of the falcon gliding soundlessly overhead, guiding Dastu through the darkened city. The cough, at least, would bother him no more.

  But they could not waste those precious arrows on dogs. And a wounded dog might howl. That wouldn’t do. They had to mount to the rooftops whenever the creatures stirred. Luckily the houses were low and ramshackle, and often abandoned. Four or five empty streets for every one where citizens clung together, fearful and poor, night watchmen armed with no more than sticks to keep the feral dogs and other, stranger animals at bay. Given a month Ott could have learned to mimic the sounds of these animals, and thus moved through Masalym with far greater ease. But they had only tonight. Had they been spotted already, though? Taken for dlömic criminals? Surely there were many such parasites, feasting on this carcass of a city.

  Most of the houses were slate-roofed—easy to climb, hazardous to cross—but eventually Hercól beckoned, and sprinted to a flat-roofed building. It was the drainpipe he’d spotted: a solid iron thing. It bore his weight as he pulled himself up, hand over hand. Despite himself Ott had to smile as he watched Hercól’s fluid movements. Alyash had strength and utter fearlessness, and a mind like a steel trap. But Hercól had something more: blazing intuition, a welding together of thought and deed that was swifter even than Ott’s own. Such a masterful tool. And yet Hercól was not his to wield, ever again, for Arqual or any other cause. He’s wielding you, if anything, old man. Your hunting days are numbered.

  When he crawled forward to the roof’s edge, Ott saw why Hercól had chosen it. Before them stretched a wide, dark road: the avenue up which the captives had been marched. Half a mile to the south the Chathrand towered over the quay. The lamps of the dlömic guard blazed on her topdeck.

  “They’ve mounted the new foremast,” said Alyash. “There’s riggin
g on it too, by the hairy devil. They work fast.”

  “The breach in the hull is surely repaired as well,” said Hercól. “No boarding her from below, then. And if we climb the scaffold they will spot us for certain. We will have to enter by one of the starboard hawse-holes.”

  “Like rats,” said Ott, and smiled.

  “I just hope your knife’s good and sharp,” muttered Alyash. “The splash-guard on the inside of those holes is made of walrus hide. You’re going to have a dandy job cutting through it while dangling from the cable.”

  “My knife is sharp,” said Hercól, “and your plan is sound, of course, Master Ott. A direct approach would be suicide. But this way we have a chance.”

  He calls me master! By the Night Gods, I taught him respect! He was not deceived, of course: there was hateful irony when Hercól spoke the word, even if he had never found another to replace it.

  Sudden wings overhead. Ott rolled onto his back: Niriviel swept over them, cutting a turn that meant No enemies moving. “All clear,” said Ott. “Let’s get on with it, gentlemen.”

  They climbed down, rounded the building, broke across the road. At once a door slammed off to their right. Well, Pitfire, they’d been seen. But recognized? Not likely. You open a door, you see figures running in deadly earnest, you slam it. Nine men in ten will hold their breath and hope the danger passes. Of course, these were not exactly men.

  Keep running, keep cold. In the lead, Hercól reached the far side of the avenue and dived into a side street, ducked left at the first alley, then right into the next. This one was straight and long and amazingly narrow, three- and four-story row houses so close together that you could, at times, touch both walls at once. Mounds of refuse, scent of just-burned garbage, rodents squeaking and popping out of their way, fitful candlelight in scattered windows. They ran.

  One block, two. No incidents. Then disaster—a dlömic woman’s shriek, half a dozen answering voices, rage and fear and shouted names. A cacophony of dogs’ howls, objects shattering near their heads. They flew into the fast sprint they had not yet asked of themselves, saw the vicious monkey-squirrels leaping across the alley through open windows ahead of them, then all around them, like crossfire, and then they were at the end of the alley, dashing over a ring road paved with old cobbles, and vaulting onto the eight-foot wall at the rim of the basin.

  “The floor below is curved,” cried Hercól. “Drop! Drop and run!”

  Cries from behind them; stones whizzing past their ears. They dropped, struck ground, rolled onto their feet. They were in the mile-wide basin into which the Chathrand had been lifted when she entered Masalym. It was a great stone bowl, half empty, with a disc of water at the center. They made for that disc, racing down the side of the bowl, then crouching and sliding, clowns and not killing machines when they hit the slippery slime-layer near the water’s edge. Once submerged they dived deep, so no ripple would betray them above. They rose together, breathed together, dived at the same time. Like my lads crossing the border at the River Narth, to kill the Sizzies in their sleep, thought the spymaster. We’re strong swimmers, and we know what we’re about. But beside the dlömu we’re slow as cows. If they catch us in the water we’re dead men. Stay deep, my boys, stay with me.

  Stones and arrows fell around them. But they did swim deep, and none of the arrows found its mark, and Ott heard no sound of pursuit. With long, swift strokes they crossed the basin, until at last the curved floor met their feet once more. Out they crawled into the slime, three crocodiles, belly-sliding right to the foot of the stone gate across the Chathrand’s berth.

  “Not here,” said Ott. “Too many eyes. We should climb out at the third berth, the abandoned one. Good cover there: it’s full of derelicts and weeds.”

  Hercól nodded. The three men bent low and ran along the wall for some five hundred yards. No guard here, no lights. And the makeshift grappling hook bit on the third throw, bit and held tight: such splendid luck. Right up the wall Hercól climbed, forty feet, hand over fist. Alyash followed. When Ott’s turn came he found the two men hauling him up.

  Red fury engulfed him. He glowered as he hooked a leg over the rim.

  “I need no man’s help up a wall,” he said. “Do you think I’d be out here tonight if I doubted for my readiness to—Eh?”

  The others were staring, transfixed. Ott sprang to his feet and looked in the same direction.

  They were at the edge of the abandoned berth, some five hundred yards from the Chathrand. At their feet, three boats sat in dry dock in various stages of decay. Upon the largest, which was draped like some ghastly burial chamber with the moldered remains of her sails, dark figures were moving toward the bows.

  Ott pulled the other men down into the weeds. The figures numbered ten. Eight of them wore black clothes, rather like the men watching ashore. They were dlömu, of course: the slight gleam of silver about the eyes proved that. All had light, thin swords, and three carried bows as well, with arrows already nocked.

  The last two figures were bound at the wrists. One was a youth in a ragged shirt and trousers; the other wore a soldier’s mail. Both had dark leather sacks pulled over their heads.

  The archers took up positions on the boat’s perimeter, studying the darkness. The others led the prisoners to one of the few remaining sections of rail and forced them to their knees.

  “Bandits,” said Alyash, “settling scores. Come on, they’re the last ones we need to worry about.”

  “Look again,” said Ott.

  The archer at the stern of the vessel, having raised a hand to his neck, was holding oddly still. Hercól’s mouth fell open in the surprise. “Dead,” he declared with certainty, and even as he spoke the man pitched forward and toppled without a cry upon the stone below.

  “What in the bottomless black Pits!” hissed Alyash.

  The wheelhouse obstructed the others’ view; they had not missed their companion yet.

  “Did you see an arrow?” Ott demanded.

  “No, Master,” said Hercól. “But look at the prisoners now.”

  The youth was being held with his forehead to the deck, but the sack on the other’s head had been pulled off. Ott could make out none of his features, but somehow, even on his knees, there was pride in his bearing. He twisted about to look up at his captors. Suddenly he cried aloud:

  “Don’t you know the law? It is death to touch me.”

  “That is no soldier!” hissed Hercól as one of the captors kicked the kneeling figure in the stomach. “That is Prince Olik!”

  “By damn, it is!” said Alyash. “Well, well—he did say he wasn’t popular. But it’s not our problem, Stanapeth. You wanted to go for the Nilstone tonight. You can’t play hero-to-the-fish-eyes as well.”

  “Alyash! We are looking at regicide!”

  “You are—I’m looking at dawn in the east. Think a moment, you softhearted fool. Dastu and your little girly will be waiting outside that blary nuthouse before long. Are you going to just leave ’em there? Oh, devil’s arse!”

  A second bowman was down. This one crumpled forward onto his knees and remained that way, chin to chest. Still the executioners at the bow saw nothing—they were bending the struggling prince over the rail, holding him by his arms and his hair, and one was testing the sharpness of a knife—but this time Ott caught a glimpse of something tiny and airborne lifting away from the fallen bowman.

  Alyash was ready to burst. “Do you know what that was? It was a crawly in one of their wing-suits! That prince has crawlies working for him! But it’s a bit late all the same.”

  The dlömu was lowering his knife to Olik’s throat.

  “A good, quick death,” said Alyash. “That prince will hardly feel a—”

  Ott’s bow sang. The dlömu with the knife staggered backward, with a surprisingly low cry of pain considering that the arrow had passed through his leg above the knee.

  Hercól was already sprinting for the boat. Ott rose and followed. “You mucking bastards!” Alyash
roared behind them, but he came on too. Ott was his commander, and he knew just how far insubordination could go.

  The dlömu had seen them, were scattering, drawing their weapons. The deck was some ten feet forward and thirty feet below the rim of the berth. Hercól flung himself into space, and Ott followed, and wanted to scream with the joy of it, free fall, the longest since his leap through the palace window in Ormael, and slaughter at the end of it, beside the best man he’d ever trained. He made it as far as the rigging—of course he did, a given—brought down bushels of the rotten canvas, turned as he fell, and had a yard of sound rope pulled taut between his hands to catch the first blow aimed at him. The dlömu was crushed under his knees; the sword was gone; Ott whipped the rope around his neck in a blur and jerked and that was one of them, still kicking but dead, and then almost wondering why he did it Ott rolled, and took the body with him, held tight by the twisted rope, and felt the prick of his next foe’s blade pass through the man and half an inch, no more, into his own chest. He kicked. The dlömu tumbled. They were trained but not sufficiently; Hercól had slain two at least. Ott’s next kick disarmed his opponent. He felt a webbed hand claw at his face, seized it, wrenched himself atop the dlömu. As his elbow crushed the other’s heart Ott found himself saddened at the thought of an Empire forced to rely on such mediocre assassins. Give me a year with them. They’d never be the same.

  His sadness did not last long, however. Their final opponent was fleeing. Ott assumed he’d try to break over the plank onto solid ground, and the dlömu at first seemed intent on doing just that. But something overcame him as he ran, and oddly, he veered away from the plank around the starboard side of the wheelhouse, like a runner circling a very small track. And when he emerged to portside the spymaster thought for an instant that he’d been replaced by someone else. The dlömu was singing—a weird, wordless noise—and what had been a clumsy fighter was suddenly—